Moving onto the Boat

August 1, 2012

Last Monday, the 30th, we were picked up in Empuriabrava and driven to Canet to get onto the boat.  After what seemed like many delays over the past few days, we were all excited to get to it.  I am attaching some pictures, but I don’t think you can really see much.  I now have new respect for people taking photographs of boats--a wider-angle lens than I currently own would be a good investment, I think!

In any case, the boat has three cabins--one V-berth in the bow and two slightly smaller ones in the stern.  Max chose the cabin on the right because it is slightly larger and has more ventilation.  It took us about two hours to unpack and get organized for the sail to Portugal, although we haven’t bothered to unpack most of the large suitcases yet; we figure we can do that once we arrive, and there is more cargo storage space than I thought.  On the one hand, there is not as much storage space in the cabins as I had hoped, but I’m sure one more purge should do it pretty well for me.  I guess I won’t need all four dressy dresses I brought with me, but I hate to get rid of all of them.  On the other hand, there is quite a lot of storage in sort of out-of-the way places like under and behind the cushions in the salon, under the mattresses on the bed, etc.  I am feeling rather proud right now because we’ve actually got quite a lot of space we haven’t used yet!  I know it will get filled up as we go on, though!

Monday evening after we went to eat we went shopping, but the store was about to close, so it was not a very productive experience.  There are still so many things we need, but they will have to wait until we are in a less touristy port.   

Tuesday morning I did laundry at a nearby campground and it might have been the greatest laundry experience EVER!  All the machines were brand new and they automatically put the soap in.  All you had to do was go to the machine on the wall, choose your machine and pay your money and the machine started by itself on the setting you chose.  It was pricey--6 euroes to wash and 3 to dry, but the machines were great!  The only bad thing was that I didn’t bother to sort and our new turquoise beach towels turned some white underwear this very pretty light blue.  Oh well...

Once we had gotten the diesel for the motor and the gas for the stove (which took forever because the marina didn’t sell it and we didn’t have a car), we were off, only 20 minutes later than we had planned.  It was a beautiful day for a sail-about 70 degrees and sunny.  There was no wind at first, so we had to motor quite a bit.